The Wicked Will Rise is the much-anticipated sequel to last year’s Dorothy Must Die. Danielle Paige’s exciting debut novel took girl-powered YA lit to another level and another world. It was a familiar one–Dorothy and the Wizard’s Oz–but with an unfamiliar look. Take everything you thought you knew about Oz and turn it inside out, and that’s Paige’s Oz. Dorothy’s an evil queen with her Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion for henchmen, the Wicked Witches relegated to a terrorist cell on the fringes, and everyone else scrambling to stay out of the way. Amy Gumm, our heroine, is another girl from Kansas, swept up by the wind and set down in Oz. Only her mission isn’t just to get home; she’s got to take down Dorothy and restore order and freedom to other world’s inhabitants. The first installment saw Amy trained as an assassin by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked in order to take down Dorothy. But the plan failed, Dorothy’s still alive, and Amy’s mad as hell about it.

We’ve got an exclusive excerpt from the next installment in the series, The Wicked Will Rise, out March 31.

]]>http://nerdist.com/exclusive-excerpt-the-wicked-will-rise-by-danielle-paige/feed/2Burn Them Anyway! Top 7 Witch Huntershttp://nerdist.com/burn-them-anyway-top-7-witch-hunters/
http://nerdist.com/burn-them-anyway-top-7-witch-hunters/#commentsFri, 06 Feb 2015 21:00:30 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=224401If there’s one thing the literary work of J.K. Rowling taught us, it’s that witches are everywhere, from the Wicked West to Eastwick. Sure, some of them are nice, I guess, but the majority of them are real nasty things who probably want to kill little children or turn into dragons or something. The wicked ones give the other ones a bad name, and like a vampire slayer or mummy strangler, there are witch hunters out there to stop them. There have even been some real life ones, but since they ended up just hanging or burning perfectly innocent people, they’re viewed now as horrible a-holes. Not everybody can be a hero. Anyway, in honor of Jeff Bridges and Ben Barnes taking up the cause in Seventh Son, which chronicles the latest in a long line of pre-destined hunters of witches, we present a list of seven famous, infamous, or just effective witch hunters in pop culture, in NO PARTICULAR ORDER.

Hansel & Gretel
They may not have been ass-kickers in the original terrifying fairy tale, but in the film Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, the brother and sister pair become leather-clad action heroes after a particularly diabolical witch, with red hair of course, because that’s the hair color of all witches, everybody knows that… (this is a joke based on perception.) While Gretel gets kidnapped (eye roll) and Hansel ends up being the solo bolo for a good chunk of the movie, you wouldn’t have one without the other and their ability to kill pointy-hatted hags is undisputed.

Matthew Hopkins
Back in the days when nobody checked credentials, and there weren’t many credentials to check, in the mid-1600s in England, a man named Matthew Hopkins traveled the countryside finding witches to torture and burn in the midst of the very violent and bloody English Civil War. He claimed he was under contract by parliament and said his title was Witchfinder General. He was very effective; he was apparently responsible for the deaths of around 300 women arrested and prosecuted for witchcraft, over 60 percent of the total number of executed “witches” during the period. The trouble, of course, is that Hopkins was never given any official powers and mostly wandered around waiting to get bribed and when a town or family couldn’t pay, he had several of their citizens killed for being witches. So, he was an awful person. A really great movie about him was made starring Vincent Price. It’ll make you very angry.

Dorothy Gale
Probably the least assuming witch hunter on the list is probably also the most famous. Dorothy didn’t mean to kill the Wicked Witch of the East when her house landed in Oz, but dead the old meanie was, and joyful the Munchkins were at the thought. That is, of course, until her sister, the Wicked Witch of the West caught wind of it (almost immediately…did they have some kind of psychic connection?) and wanted to get the pretty and her little dog too. Though green-face gives our heroine and her new friends a lot of flack, and flying monkeys, Dorothy ultimately does vanquish her, too, with some errant water. She kills two witches! And the guard has my favorite line reading in cinema history.

Every Disney Prince For Like Ever
It certainly took awhile for Disney movies to let the princesses fight their own battles, especially when witches are concerned. While there weren’t actually THAT many witches in Disney films, from the very first animated feature in 1937 until Tangled in 2010, if there was a witch needed fighting, it was a prince that did it. Or dwarfs. The presumptuously named Prince Charming takes a back seat to the 7 miners in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but it’s Prince Philip who does the Maleficent-murdering in Sleeping Beauty and it’s Prince Eric who does the Ursula-skewering in The Little Mermaid. Man, Disney princesses sure were damselly for a long time, weren’t they?

Suzy Bannion
This is another example of a young woman who doesn’t necessarily WANT to kill witches, but she certainly isn’t fine with being part of a coven, or being killed by them herself. I mean, that’s just not above board, man. In Dario Argento’s masterpiece of technicolor gore, and plots that make no sense, Suspiria, Suzy Bannion moves to Germany to join a prestigious ballet academy, but the more she learns about the teachers, and the more of her friends who die grisly deaths, the more she says “hey, wait a minute.” The school is run by Helena Markos, an ancient and powerful witch, who apparently is just as vulnerable to neck-stabbing as anyone.

Perseus
For this one, we’re going all the way back to Greek mythology. While a Gorgon is not technically a witch, I guess, a horrible haggish creature with snakes for hair and the ability to turn people to stone if they look at her is a pretty witchy thing to do. It takes a great hero to slay this beast, and one that’s a son of Zeus. Of course, they were all sons of Zeus back then; that dude got AROUND. Perseus was a very legendary hero because he not only cut off Medusa’s head, but he also saved the beautiful Andromeda from a sea monster called Cetus. He was the first hero in Greek Myth, actually. Man, he was pretty awesome.

The Boy and his Grandmother
To bring it all home, we have the case of a young man who didn’t think he’d have anything to do with witches, nor did he think he’d ever not be a human little boy, but boy was he wrong. The protagonist of Roald Dahl’s book The Witches stumbles across a huge gathering of England’s witches, led by The Grand High Witch, who is awful and evil and horrible and gross. The boy gets turned into a mouse, and it’s up he and his grandma to foil the witches’ plans, by tricking them all into eating mouse-maker stuff, turning everyone into a little squeaker who get stomped on by the cooking staff. Yeah, that’ll teach ‘em to mess with children and the elderly!

And there we have it, seven of the most effective witch hunters in all of the world. We do not recommend attacking witches yourself, but if you see Seventh Son you can see how the professionals do it.

For a list of 7 reluctant heroes of cinema check out the latest episode of the Dan Cave:

]]>http://nerdist.com/burn-them-anyway-top-7-witch-hunters/feed/2THE PAUL LYNDE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Scariest Thing You’ll See All Yearhttp://nerdist.com/the-paul-lynde-halloween-special-the-scariest-thing-youll-see-all-year/
http://nerdist.com/the-paul-lynde-halloween-special-the-scariest-thing-youll-see-all-year/#commentsSat, 01 Nov 2014 02:00:28 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=196967Back in the 1970s, anybody considered a popular enough musical act or TV personality got their own variety show special thing. It was the age of variety programs and everybody from Donny and Marie to Tony Orlando and Dawn had them. Hell, David Letterman got his start on TV as a bit player on the Starland Vocal Band show. But there were also these insipid holiday specials that happened all the time in which somebody would host a party at their fake house with a studio audience and a whole bunch of other celebrities would stop by for no reason other than ratings. These happened all the time, but perhaps none of them were as infamous as the 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special. The horror…the horror!

Usually, these kinds of TV specials would never have been repeated or even remembered after their initial airing, but because Paul Lynde, the famous center square for a number of years on The Hollywood Squares, has become some sort of icon of campiness, the desire to find this weird-ass special grew and grew. A few years ago, a friend of mine was working in the warehouse of an online DVD retailer and happened upon copies of The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. Having never heard of it but being very curious, he procured himself a copy and brought it to a Halloween movie night we had with other friends. The result was so weird, so off-putting, so groan-inducing and off the wall that we have since watched it every single year on or around Halloween. It can’t be oversold just how insane this is.

Paul Lynde, for those who don’t know, was famous for being incredibly gay but never came right out and said it. He was like the comedy world’s answer to Liberace, if that title wasn’t already taken by Charles Nelson Reilly. Lynde was in the film Bye Bye Birdie playing the put-upon father who sings the song “Kids,” he played Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, he voiced Templeton the rat in the animated Charlotte’s Web, and other than that he was just a TV personality who showed up everywhere. He’d had specials of his own in the past, but hadn’t had one for a while when ABC gave him this monstrosity.

Now, I keep talking about it being awful, but why is it so awful? It’s perhaps one of the lamest hours of comedy ever produced. Nearly every single joke lands with a thud, especially by today’s standards. They’re all groaners. Lynde was known for his double-entendres and laughing at his own jokes, but here he’s laughing at nothing. His humor’s been more or less entirely watered down and it just doesn’t work at all. One of the writers of this was Bruce Villanch, a writer for Lynde on Hollywood Squares so I’m sure the pair of them came up with most of these dialed-down “laugh” lines.

There are also a series of weird vignettes that have, and I can’t emphasize this enough, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH HALLOWEEN. At all. The “story” of the special is that Paul Lynde’s housekeeper Margaret (played by Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz) takes him to her sister’s house in the mountains to get away from all these darn kids. The house is a spooky looking mansion and her sister happens to be Witchiepoo from H.R. Pufnstuff. Turns out Margaret is a witch also and they’re tired of witches getting a bad rap, so they give Lynde three wishes. He can wish for ANYTHING HE WANTS.

What’s the first thing he wishes for? He wants to be a trucker. Yeah, a big-rig driving, CB radio-using trucker. WHYYYYY? This is all to set up a sketch in which he plays the Rhinestone Trucker who is racing to reach his girlfriend (HA!) to get married before his rival does. The rival is played by an actual funny person, Tim Conway (clearly slumming it), and the girlfriend (HA!) is played by Roz Kelly. Now, if you don’t know who Roz Kelly is, she played Pinky Tuscadero on three episodes of Happy Days. And most people wouldn’t have known that either which is why she was credited several times as “Roz ‘Pinky Tuscadero’ Kelly”.

His second wish is an accident but he ends up being a Sheik (attempting to mimic that famous old Rudolph Valentino movie) in the desert attempting to woo an ice-hearted heiress (Florence Henderson) but ends up being foiled by Tim Conway’s Legionnaire. Florence Henderson comes back later (she is billed as a “special guest” after all) to sing a disco version of “That Old Black Magic” and the director decides being as close to her face as possible is the best course of action.

But, honest to God, perhaps the strangest part of this whole experiment is that the big musical guest for the show is… and get ready for this… the rock group KISS. Yes, KISS. Makeup, spikes, glam metal, area rock, pyrotechnics and big huge amplifiers — they’re on a show hosted by Paul Lynde that features TWO disco music numbers, the worst jokes anyone’s ever heard, and celebrities peoples’ grandmothers might have enjoyed. What a weird, weird addition. KISS performs three numbers on the show, “Detroit Rock City,” which features the camera spinning about 60 times, they slow it down with “Beth” by Peter Criss at the piano, and they finish up (which is Paul’s third wish) with “King of the Night Time World” in which Gene Simmons does his best to never actually play the bass and instead make weird arm motions and breathe fire. This was one of KISS’ first television appearances, but not their actual first like it’s billed several places.

There’s really only so much expostulating I can do about The Paul Lynde Halloween Special beyond simply saying it never fails to make my head ache trying to figure out why it exists, how it got made, and who thought it was going to be a good idea. But there’s truly only so much talking I can do about it. You really should just watch it for yourself, which you can do below courtesy of some sadistic YouTuber. It’s worth a look, just know you’ll never be the same.

]]>http://nerdist.com/the-paul-lynde-halloween-special-the-scariest-thing-youll-see-all-year/feed/7GAME OF THRONES Meets THE WIZARD OF OZ in Super-Fun Mash-Uphttp://nerdist.com/game-of-thrones-meets-the-wizard-of-oz-in-super-fun-mash-up/
http://nerdist.com/game-of-thrones-meets-the-wizard-of-oz-in-super-fun-mash-up/#commentsSun, 11 May 2014 23:30:15 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=146545So sue us: we love a good mash-up. Especially one as clever as Andy Purviance‘s delightful take on the Great Houses from Game of Thrones and what he perceives to be their Wizard of Oz counterparts. Whether you call it Game of Oz or Wizard of Thrones there’s no two ways around it: this creative bit of fan art is fun and fantastical flight of fancy. (Try and say that five times fast.)

Tackling characters from not just the screen versions but the respective books of each — causing euphoric joy, no doubt, for the completionists in your life — Otterlove (as his handle refers to him) took nine characters from L. Frank Baum’s Oz-ian world and paired them with Westerosi houses he deemed most appropriate. The result is a world wherein Glinda is a Tyrell, the Tinman is a Stark, and Toto is a Tully, which is pretty appropriate and great.

Purviance also managed to highlight not just the houses but their House Words. As you can see, under the tutelage of The Wizard, House Baratheon becomes “Ours is the Fraud” instead of fury. Wholly appropriate considering the fraudulent baby Baratheons that have ruled the house and the Realm thus far. He’s also thrown Mombi (a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the North whom you’ll remember from Return to Oz) into the mix, representing fellow non-magical entities the Greyjoys. Under the Ozian empire their house words, “We Do Not Sow” are transformed to “We Do Not Scheme,” which is hilarious, given everything they all tend to do. The only thing? We’re not 100% sold that The Wicked Witch of the West would be a Targaryen. But perhaps that’s just us.

Which other Houses/people of Oz would you like to see caricatured? Let us know in the comments.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado – taking you with it – you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little bluebirds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can’t be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There’s still a yellow brick road—but even that’s crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy.

They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm – and I’m the other girl from Kansas.

I’ve been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.

I’ve been trained to fight.

And I have a mission.

The way the words would have it, there’s a fierce girl army getting ready to rise up and take down whatever mean girls or oppressive government regimes might stand in their way, all while maintaining the world’s most self obsessed melodramatic inner-monologues.

Dorothy Must Die, Danielle Paige’s debut novel, features Amy Gumm, a pink-haired, teenage badass and high school outsider from a trailer park in Kansas with a dead-beat dad and a junkie mom. Amy’s got the penchant for sass and knife’s edge attitude that always gets the better of the Katnisses and Veronica Marses of the world. But it’s that same independent streak that makes people want to follow her, believe in her, and eventually lets her believe in herself.

Dorothy Must Die goes back to Oz, but the place is a wreck. It’s dark, filthy, and dangerous, hardly the somewhere over the rainbow it’s been billed as for so long. Amy lands there by tornado, as most farm girls are wont to do, and instantly gets caught up in an underground resistance movement fighting Dorothy.

There are shades of Hunger Games in Oz’s burnt out countryside and subjugated Munchkins; touches of Harry Potter in Amy’s anointment as The One destined to take down Dorothy, and glimmers of the kind of magical world building found in The Chronicles of Narnia and The Magicians.

In less skilled hands, all this could make for a trite take on well-worn territory. But Paige gives Amy a strong voice and an even stronger point of view. She isn’t just one thing: she’s a little insecure as the outsider, but she’s secretly confident she’s better than the so-called “cool girls”; She’s wary of the Witches who start feeding her propaganda, but she itches for the power they can give her; She thinks the hot guy is a little too hot and a little too self-aware, but she’s not afraid to call him – or anyone – on their BS.

Dorothy Must Die is a YA novel, to be sure, but Paige does not underestimate her readers: there’s real violence, there’s real death, there are real stakes. She puts Amy through bloody battles, makes her witness horrifying murders, and has her experience an adulterated, wholly perverted Oz that’s essentially a nightmare.

Amy’s adventures proceed at a breezy clip, starting off, of course, with the gust of wind that takes her into Oz, and never really dies down. She’s off and running down the Yellow Brick Road and deep into the mythology of the world she saw in the movies with little time to spare. The patented teen-girl-inner-monologue runs along with her, constantly questioning, wondering, coveting, and secretly crushing.

Dorothy is the ultimate mean girl, her trademark blue gingham dress turned into the stuff of Project Runway rejects, offsetting serious cleavage and a dictator’s megalomania. And the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, where Oz’s remaining witches go underground, features some seriously bad bitches of its own.

All this is to say that Dorothy Must Die is kind of the ultimate in girl-powered literature. You’ve got empowered heroines, sure, but Paige also conjures a formidable villainess in Dorothy and some manipulative lady revolutionaries. Here, women and girls are allowed to be anything. This is a step beyond the one woman up front: Katniss flanked by her boyfriends and a bunch of men who want to take her down. This really is a woman’s world.

Dorothy Must Die is Danielle Paige’s debut novel for HarperTeen, to be released April 1st; It’s in development as a series to air on The CW with Heroes’ Tim Kring attached to produce.

]]>http://nerdist.com/book-review-dorothy-must-die-by-danielle-paige-2/feed/8The 13 Most Badass Female Villains in Pop Culturehttp://nerdist.com/the-13-most-bad-ass-female-villains-in-pop-culture/
http://nerdist.com/the-13-most-bad-ass-female-villains-in-pop-culture/#commentsFri, 07 Mar 2014 21:30:58 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=120852In honor of Once Upon a Time bringing in a trilogy’s worth of badass villainesses, from comics to movies to animation, I present thirteen of the most badass chicks in pop culture history. Better watch out, ’cause these girls will totally cut you.

13. Varla (Faster, Pussycast…Kill! Kill!)

You may not know the name, but you’ve certainly felt her influence in pop culture. Varla, as played by the fabulously-named actress Tura Satana, was the ring leader of a wild pack of killer go-go dancers in director Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult classic film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Varla was a stone cold monster who, within the first thirty minutes of her movie, drag races in the desert, karate chops a dude to death, and kidnaps his girlfriend. Sporting a black cat suit that showed off her rather abundant gifts, long black hair with bangs, and painted-on eyebrows, Varla was the template for every bad ass chick you ever met at a dive bar or at a tattoo parlor who ever gave you the stink eye for staring at her for too long.

12. Gozer the Gozerian (Ghostbusters)

This entry is cheating a little bit, after all, Gozer the Gozerian isn’t really a woman, it’s an ancient Babylonian God who can choose any form it wishes. However, when it finally makes its big entrance on the roof of Sigourney Weaver’s building at the climax of Ghostbusters, it chooses the form of a back up dancer from an early eighties music video. But it’s a female backup dancer, so it counts in my book. Although only existing as a female form for a grand total of three minutes before becoming a giant marshmallow creature, Gozer made the most of her time as a “nimble little minx.”

11. The Borg Queen (Star Trek: First Contact)

When the Borg were introduced as the new villainous alien species in Star Trek The Next Generation, they were a single minded hive with no personality. As cool as that concept is, when it came time to make Star Trek: First Contact for the big screen, the producers knew that they needed someone to act as the “face” of the Borg, so they came up with the notion of the Borg Queen. Played by Alice Krige, who brought a creepy sexuality to the role, the Borg Queen ended up being the franchise’s most memorable villain next to Khan. And her grand entrance, where her head and shoulders are lowered into her body from above, was super badass back in 1996. She would later be used several times on Star Trek: Voyager, as that show ran the Borg into the ground, but she was never cooler than in her first appearance in First Contact.

10. Annie Wilkes (Misery)

While most of the female villains on this list are “sexy” in some way (which says a lot about our culture’s views on sex and “badness,” but that’s another article for another day), no one can claim to have ever called Kathy Bates’ breakthrough performance in 1990’s Stephen King adaptation Misery “sexy” in any way. Bates won an Oscar for her portrayal of Wilkes, a deranged obsessive fangirl of fictional literary character Misery Chastain, who ends up caring for her favorite novelist (and Misery Chastain’s creator) Paul Sheldon after he’s injured in a car accident. She’ll only help him recover on the condition that Sheldon writes a new novel resurrecting the character with whom she is obsessed. Needless to say, there are complications. In all my decades of movie-going, I have never seen anyone literally get up out of their chair and fist pump when a movie bad guy “gets theirs” like I did at the climax of this movie.

9. Joan Crawford (Mommie Dearest)

I have no idea if the real Joan Crawford was as much of a monster as the 1981 biopic film Mommie Dearest would suggest (actually, I read the book…she was that bad), but Faye Dunaway sunk her teeth into the role of Hollywood golden era acting legend Joan Crawford, who at the height of her fame decided to adopt two cherubic orphans “for a little extra publicity” and then proceeded to make their lives a living hell. Dunaway’s performance is part kabuki theater, part campy horror flick, and entirely something you’ll never forget. Dunaway was coming off over a decade’s worth of critically praised performances and an Oscar win when she made this, and she blames the film’s reception as a camptastic schlock fest for ruining her career. (According to urban legend, Dunaway also claims to be haunted by the ghost of the real Joan Crawford for ruining her reputation. I desperately want to see someone tackle a movie based on that scenario.) For thirty plus years now, gay men the world over have become grateful for the endless amount of quotes Mommie Dearest has provided us, and for everyone else, the movie can serve as reminder that your mom isn’t really that bad.

8. The Alien Queen (Aliens)

Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie introduced us to the Xenomorph, one of the most terrifying creatures in sc-fi movie history. James Cameron’s sequel Aliens raised the stakes even higher by introducing a whole colony overrun by Xenomorphs. But the worst was still to come for Ellen Ripley and her crew of Colonial Marines, when we discover that these aliens are merely the children of a ginormous Alien Queen, a creature that is the living embodiment of the phrase “never come between a mother and her cubs.” The Queen is one mean mother… literally. When Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley says, “Get away from her, YOU BITCH!” you are right there with her.

7. Mystique (Uncanny X-Men)

When Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont created the mutant shapeshifter Mystique, he probably had no idea she’d grow into one of the franchise’s most popular and enduring villains, and even come to symbolize the entire franchise due to a brilliant make-up idea conceived of for the first X-Men movie. Although her portrayals in the comics and the movies come with starkly different backstories, one thing remains the same about her: her single-minded devotion to protecting the mutant race at all costs….regardless of innocent humans getting in the way. Although originally just part of a team, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, she quickly became the standout character, and is now the X-Men’s most notorious female adversary.

6. Catwoman (Batman)

Batman doesn’t only have all the best villains, he also has all the best villainesses. So when it came time to pick one for this list, I almost gave this spot to Talia al Ghul, Poison Ivy, or Harley Quinn. But in the end, this entry belongs to Batman’s longest running femme fatale, Selina Kyle, a/k/a Catwoman. While Catwoman teeters the line between hero and villain more than anyone else on this list, truth is, she’s still a master jewel thief, and last time I checked, stealing was still considered bad. Besides, for the first fifty or so years of her existence, she was definitely considered a villain, so I say that’s where she really belongs. Aside from a long career in the comics, Catwoman has also had a ton of memorable portrayals in the media over the years, including Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, and most recently Anne Hathaway (I won’t mention C.I.N.O, or “Catwoman In Name Only.” You know who I mean.) For decades now, this badass villain has been inspiring young boys to visit dominatrixes when they grow up, and had no doubt inspired young girls to be dominatrixes themselves. Nothing more badass than that.

5. Cersei Lannister Baratheon (Game of Thrones)

I know many out there that would argue that King Joffrey is the “big bad” of Game of Thrones, and while he is indeed the most inherently hateable, I would say the biggest villain would be none other than his mother, Cersei Lannister Baratheon. It is she who is the real power behind the throne at King’s Landing, and she is the puppet master who is pulling all the strings in a quest to seek absolute power for herself and her family, possibly even more so than her father. Just why is Cersei so awful? For starters, she had three kids with her twin brother (ew), then plotted to kill her husband the king, and when the King’s Hand Ned Stark found out the truth and tried to expose her, well… let’s just say it didn’t go very well for him at all. Cersei is the perfect villain for an ongoing series like Game of Thrones, because no matter how much you hate her, you kind of love to hate her, and realize the show would lose a vital element were she to go away. Actress Lena Headey brings an actual humanity to Cersei that makes you almost sympathize with her at times, and actually not want her to die a horrible death… if only for a little while.

4. Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)

The fictional embodiment of what happens whenever a bully is given to much power and free reign. Played by actress Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for her performance, Nurse Ratched is on a massive power trip and gets sadistic glee from brutally terrorizing the assortment of outcast patients that live in her psychiatric ward, including Jack Nicholson, Danny Devito, Christopher Lloyd, and Brad Dourif, in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Far more than anyone else on this list, you know there are real Nurse Ratched types out there, making her all the more horrible. Louise Fletcher didn’t have much of a movie career after this, but she would go on to play the evil Kai Wynn of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, becoming one of the primary antagonists for that series, and she infused her with more than a little of Ratched’s cold evil.

3. May Day (A View to a Kill)

There is quite the long list when it comes to female 007 villains, and therefore it’s hard to pick one to represent them all. A great deal of people would probably say it’s Pussy Galore, played by Honor Blackman in 1964’s Goldfinger, but I’d have to disagree. I think the best Bond girl villainess would have to be May Day from 1985’s A View To A Kill. First and foremost, she’s Grace Jones, a statuesque goddess with fierce style (hello, look at her awesome haircut and those shoulder pad suits!) She base jumps off of the Eiffel Tower, and while she does sleep with Bond, she uses him just as much as he’s using her. Heck, for a second I thought he might give the old boy a heart attack (Roger Moore was already fifty-seven years old when he made this one, it could have happened.) Like most female 007 villains, the power of Bond’s penis makes her switch sides at the end, and she ends up sacrificing herself and saves him. In the end however, I think if May Day went toe to toe with any other Bond girls she’d kick their butts hands down. May Day for the win.

2. The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)

The Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz is the original scary bad guy most kids are exposed to for the first time, and she is certainly one that makes an impression that lasts a lifetime. Not only does Margaret Hamilton’s character make one of the best entrances of any villain in movie history (“Who killed my sister?”), but she goes out in one of the best ways too (“Oh, what a world, what a world”). The original character as found in the L. Frank Baum novel wasn’t that much to write home about; it was Hamilton who infused her with that manic cackle and that green skin. The Wicked Witch of the West is so iconic, in fact, that if you were to say the word “witch” to the average person on the street, the image that their mind that would conjure would probably be that of Margaret Hamilton’s character above anything else. Despite attempts to make the witch seem more sympathetic in things like Wicked and Oz, the Great and Powerful, it’ll take a lot more than that to undo the Wizard of Oz‘s legacy of the green hag as the ultimate evil.

1. The Disney Villainesses

Starting in 1937 with the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney has had, hands down, the greatest assortment of female villainy anywhere. All of these ladies are dripping in malevolence and glamour, from Cinderella’s wicked stepmother Lady Tremaine, to the ultimate bitterness of Maleficent (sixteen years of making a kingdom suffer because she wasn’t invited to a baby shower? That’s devotion, baby), to Cruella de Vil, someone who wanted to kill adorable puppies to make a coat, for heaven’s sake. Take that, Hannibal Lecter. Then there’s the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, Ursula the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid.… the list goes on and on. Any one of these ladies could have earned a separate spot on this here list, but collectively, they own the number one space by a landslide.

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Who is your favorite bad ass female villain? Let us know in the comments below.

]]>http://nerdist.com/the-13-most-bad-ass-female-villains-in-pop-culture/feed/14Report: Oscar Tribute For THE WIZARD OF OZ Will Include Judy Garland’s Childrenhttp://nerdist.com/report-oscar-tribute-for-the-wizard-of-oz-will-include-judy-garlands-children/
http://nerdist.com/report-oscar-tribute-for-the-wizard-of-oz-will-include-judy-garlands-children/#commentsTue, 25 Feb 2014 02:45:15 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=117310This year marks the 75th Anniversary of one of, if not the most beloved movie of all time, The Wizard of Oz. This upcoming weekend’s 86th Academy Awards ceremony will feature a tribute to the beloved classic, and although just what that tribute will entail is being kept under wraps, one part of it has been revealed to The Hollywood Reporter: Judy Garland’s three children, Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joey Luft, will reunite at the Academy Awards on Sunday night to help commemorate the 75th anniversary of their mother’s most iconic film. All three of Garland’s children have publicly squabbled in the past, but it’s good to see they are putting all that aside to honor their mother’s most important role.

It’s hard to imagine our popular culture without The Wizard of Oz, as much as it would be to imagine our culture without Star Wars, so let’s hope that whatever the Academy does is fitting for such a legendary movie (this year also marks the 75th Anniversary of Gone with the Wind; you’d imagine there would be some kind of tribute for that movie as well, all things considered). A side note: recently, Liza Minnelli publicly told Matthew McConaughey, who is nominated for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, “Honey, if you don’t win the Academy Award, I’m giving you mine!” You might wanna bring your gold statue along with you to the ceremony then, Liza… just in case.

]]>http://nerdist.com/report-oscar-tribute-for-the-wizard-of-oz-will-include-judy-garlands-children/feed/1The Shelf: THIS IS THE END, THE CROODS, THE WIZARD OF OZhttp://nerdist.com/the-shelf-this-is-the-end-the-croods-the-wizard-of-oz/
http://nerdist.com/the-shelf-this-is-the-end-the-croods-the-wizard-of-oz/#commentsTue, 01 Oct 2013 20:00:23 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=91327This week is a curious mixture of end-of-the-world, beginning-of-the-world, over-the-rainbow, under-the-sea, and get-out-of-the-house movies to make your Blu-ray collection wonder about your sanity. If you’re the kind of person to buy cartoons and horror movies in the same trip, then this is the week for you.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s directorial debut is a metatextual lampooning of the friends in their group, including James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson, as they attempt to survive under one roof whilst the apocalypse is happening. Emma Watson, Aziz Ansari, Michael Cera, and others make cameos in the violent and raunchy comedy about the rapture.

This Dreamworks digitally-animated feature tells the story of the eponymous family of cavemen who, led by their patriarch Grug (Nicolas Cage), are perpetually terrified of everything, never venturing out of their little rock formation home and eating only what’s very near them. They even sleep in a pile on top of each other so they know where everybody is at all times. Everybody’s pretty content with this except for eldest daughter Eep (Emma Stone), who longs to venture out and see what the world has in store. One evening, she finds Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a handsome and knowledgeable outsider who wears a sloth named Belt as a belt and knows how to make fire. She’s reprimanded for leaving the cave, but eventually they all have to vacate, as plate tectonics begin to make the ground crumble. They have to get somewhere safer, but that means going where they’ve never been before, and Grug is none too pleased about that.

The Croods, like a lot of these non-franchise, non-Disney-Pixar animations, is visually very stunning and even has a few genuine laugh moments, but isn’t necessarily the most entertaining movie for grown ups. I watched the movie in a theater with a lot of children and I didn’t hear all that much in the way of laughter from them. It’s not a complete waste of time, as the designs are really colorful and inventive, but it doesn’t hold a candle to something like Wreck-It Ralph. The voice cast is all very impressive, though, with Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman, and Clark Duke rounding out the talent (Read our interview with Clark Duke right here!). The movie did okay here, but really cleaned up for whatever reason overseas, so a sequel is already planned for the spring of 2019, which is four years beyond hoverboard time.

What makes a movie timeless has very little to do with the time in which it was made. It actually has more to do with the way the story was told using the available techniques of the time, be they silent films from the ’20s or the newest CGI-filled epic; a well-told story is a well-told story. Perhaps no better example of this can be found than Victor Fleming’s 1939 adaptation (a remake at the time) of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. This is a movie you can watch a hundred times as a child and then again as an adult and not only get as much out of it, but even more now that you recognize just how much work went into it. Everybody knows the story: a little girl named Dorothy from Kansas gets caught in a twister and ends up with her little dog Toto in the land of Oz, going from black & white to color in the process, and encountering Munchkins, scarecrows, tin men, lions (and tigers and bears, oh my), horses of a different color, and witches both good and wicked. In narrative terms, it could not be any simpler, as it essentially follows the Joseph Campbell idea of the hero’s journey to the letter, but the stops Dorothy makes on her journey and the people she meets are so rich and fleshed out that it rarely seems so easy.

For the 75th anniversary, Warner Brothers (which now owns the film from the MGM collapse of a few years ago) has spared no expense in restoring the film and upping it to new HD vibrancy while maintaining its original aspect ratio and scenic integrity. Fleming was truly a master of making a studio look both super realistic and altogether artificial at the same time with massive sets and very colorful costumes. Technicolor was a relatively new thing at the time, and they wanted to make the most use out of it that they could. The film in this version truly hasn’t looked better. Another change has been 3D converting it for a limited IMAX theatrical run and now for 3D televisions. While I never think post-conversion is a great idea, or even a really necessary one, the stereoscoping of The Wizard of Oz is very well done and adds just that little bit of depth to make it seem that much more fanciful. This is the oldest movie ever post-converted to 3D, and there was a worry it couldn’t handle it, but it looks great.

There is a huge gift set that comes with the Blu-ray, a book, some figurines, and other mishegas for the collector, but it also comes in a regular multi-disc version if you just want the movie in its different formats. Film restoration is a real passion of mine, and the job they did on The Wizard of Oz has to be one of the best this side of Martin Scorsese. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, or how much you think you’ve grown out of it, you can’t watch The Wizard of Oz without feeling like you’re a kid seeing it for the first time. THAT is what makes it timeless.

Switching gears 180%, to mix a metaphor or two, is the release of the first three films in the inexplicably popular Amityville movies of the late ’70s and ’80s, The Amityville Horror (1979), Amityville II: The Possession (1982), and Amityville 3-D (1983). Based on the reportedly real occurrences happening to the Lutz family on Long Island, the first film has the family (made up of James Brolin, Margo Kidder, and some kids) moving into a house that had been the scene of grisly murders only a few years before. As based on the family’s actual reports, they began experiencing strange and violent phenomena that many at the time believed was due to the evil energy left over in the house coupled with the tension between George Lutz and his stepson. The movie sensationalizes it a lot more, with blood coming out of the walls and entities walking through the house and things like that. Brolin gives a totally unhinged performance as Lutz that allegedly kept him from working in movies for two years afterwards.

The success of the first movie gave way to a sequel, directed by Italian maestro Damiano Damiani, about the original murders that led to the Lutzes’ experiences. A teenage boy killed his entire family with a rifle one night and didn’t remember it happening the next day, even running to the police himself to report it. He could have been lying or he could have been crazy, but what was never known is why and how the entire family could sleep through the first few gunshots (as everyone was killed in bed) without getting up and trying to escape. So, this movie tries to make it seem like the devil did it.

The third movie, in 3-D like so many third horror movies were at the time, tells the wholly fictionalized account of a reporter staying in the house to try to debunk the stories and being besieged by the evil spirits himself. This is completely false, though, as none of the subsequent owners of the house experienced any kind of paranormal phenomena while they lived there and all lived very long, fruitful lives. Why did these two things happen? Was the ghost stuff real or fake? No one will likely ever know.

The Blu-ray set from Scream Factory has some great new features, mainly in the form of commentaries. The original film has a commentary by Dr. Hans Holzer, an acclaimed paranormal researcher and PhD in parapsychology, who wrote a book about the murders in the house. He talks a lot about the differences between what “really” happened in the Lutz case and what was made up entirely by the studios. He’s often very derisive about why they felt the need to add these things “when the real story is so interesting on its own.” The second film has a commentary by Holzer’s daughter Alexandra, who wrote a book about what it was like growing up with a famous ghost researcher as a father. The third movie has almost no features, but does contain both the 2-D and 3-D versions of the film.

The Amityville Horror is one of the most troubling ghost stories in American history, and this Blu-ray set does a good job of talking about the dramatization of that for the purposes of Hollywood entertainment. The movies themselves aren’t the best, but they do mark a very important time in the nation’s awareness of hauntings, and with its continued fascination with Amityville, which has led to a number of sequels and remakes even to today.

ALSO AVAILABLE

The Little Mermaid: Diamond Edition – Go under the sea with the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack of the beginning of the Katzenberg regime at Disney Animation. Ursula’s still terrifying.

Doctor Who The Doctors Revisited 5-8 – The middle four BBC America specials chronicling each of the 11 Doctors. This one has the Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and Paul McGann ones and accompanying stories “Earthshock,” “Vengeance on Varos,” “Remembrance of the Daleks,” and “The TV Movie.”

House of Wax 3D Blu-ray – The old Vincent Price horror film was originally presented in 3D and is now again for those who have that technology. Paris Hilton is nowhere to be found.

Beginning today, you can follow the yellow brick road in high definition, on a really big screen, in stereoscopy. In conjunction with the upcoming 75th Anniversary 3D Blu-ray release of Victor Fleming’s classic The Wizard of OZ coming October 1st, for one week only in select IMAX theaters, filmgoers will have the chance to see one of the most colorful and vibrant films ever made fully restored on IMAX 3D.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of seeing it at the newly-renovated Chinese Theater in Hollywood and it really is a thing of beauty. This is the oldest film retrofitted to IMAX 3D and it works surprisingly well. There’s an obvious addition of depth, but zero loss of original picture quality or integrity. The aspect ratio remains unchanged, making this possibly the only non-widescreen 3D movie I’ve ever seen. It’s still a wonderful film, but now the images figuratively and literally jump off the screen. Regardless of how you feel about 3D, you shouldn’t miss the chance to see one of the best-produced movies of all time on glorious IMAX.

It’s only a one-week engagement, so don’t miss out. Check the IMAX site to see where it’s playing near you.

To say that Oz the Great and Powerful is a risky undertaking is an understatement. It’s like telling the blackjack dealer to hit when you’re sitting on 19. Nowadays, rebooting seems like the cure du jour to fix an aging or ailing franchise, but Disney took a different tack and they did it with a franchise one wouldn’t have expected: they decided to make a prequel story based loosely on the L. Frank Baum books detailing how the Man Behind the Curtain got there in the first place. It was a daring feat, to be certain. This was, by no means, a film that needed to exist, and I was extremely skeptical going into it. That being said, I wasn’t just pleasantly surprised by director Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful, but I left the theater glad that they took such a risk. No, it isn’t the greatest film in the world, and no, it won’t dethrone the 1939 film in our hearts and minds, but the visual artistry and the sheer ballsiness of it are to be lauded. There may not be any ruby slippers to be found, but I was happy to return to the home of some of my childhood memories even if they have a new coat of paint.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NdeuYgRoTI?rel=0]

From the moment the familiar strains of a Danny Elfman score started swelling, I was filled with a sense of unease. Would this be like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland all over again? My fears were quickly assuaged, as I took a deep breath and let Raimi take me on a turbulent hot air balloon ride gone awry. For a guy that cut his teeth on low-budget horror flicks like Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell, Raimi proves himself to be quite capable of turning out a big budget family picture as well, and Oz the Great and Powerful gives him his biggest toybox yet.

This isn’t quite the Oz that you remember, and that’s okay. Taking notes from the iconography of the 1939 film and elements of Baum’s mythology, this is unmistakably Raimi’s vision. To call it Oz-my of Darkness wouldn’t be that far off – a selfish jerk is transported to a magical land threatened by an evil horde and must use his ingenuity, wit and trickery to save the day. Case in point: Bruce Campbell even swings by. Blink, though, and you’ll miss him. The screenplay by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire is well done, although a bit uneven throughout. Everything, from the sepia-toned Kansas opening to the pulp-inspired performances to the production design, makes for a scarier, albeit inconsistent Oz film that unmistakably bears its maker’s mark.

Starting with a boxy, tighter aspect ratio in an Instagrammed Kansas, we open on the traveling circus in which Oscar plies his trade as a sham artist magician until nature’s vacuum cleaner transports him to Oz, where the world and the screen open up to give us a vision of Raimi’s brightly colored Oz. This Oz is crisper, for one, but that’s to be expected when there’s 74 years of technological advancement in between trips. There are subtle nods to familiar faces like the Cowardly Lion, who shows up in an understated, but smile-inducing moment. It would have been nice to see other characters like the Tin Man or our favorite straw golem, but keep in mind that all of this is taking prior to the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

For the acting ensemble, Oz the Great and Powerful presents a particular challenge of blending live-action characters with CGI creatures. While this is by no means a new development or a novelty in film, the already cartoonish nature of Oz forces the ensemble to dig deep to ground it with a sense of reality. To get hyperbolic with it, you can go one of two ways: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or Space Jam. Both have their merits, but the former creates a believable mish-mash of animation and reality whereas the latter simply makes us believe we can fly. Thankfully, Raimi’s ensemble rises to the occasion, and sometimes, like when Oz (James Franco) sits in a shattered teacup with CGI characters Finley the flying monkey (Zach Braff) and sentient porcelain doll China Girl (Joey King), the scenes are so compellingly performed and well integrated that you forget that Franco is the only actual human being on screen.

Donning the mantle of Oz (whose full name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, or OZ PINHEAD for you acronym fanatics) is James Franco, who ably plays the selfish, huckster magician who comes face first with destiny. Robert Downey Jr. was originally attached to play the role, which calls for a charming jerk willing to humble himself, but it’s a blessing in disguise that he didn’t get it. These days, RDJ seems too caught up in the Tony Stark trope to let himself be cast in an embarrassing light. Franco’s willingness to play, as evidenced by his comedic work, is to his benefit; yes, he’s a real dick when we first meet him, but he takes a licking time and time again, which is the quickest way to put a protagonist in our good graces. At his best, Franco’s performance is enlightening, but for the most part it’s steady and capable, which is what the film needs especially when it’s being pulled every which way by an increasingly colorful cast.

Once Franco makes his way to the Land of Oz, he encounters three witches that feel awfully familiar – Glinda, Theodora, and Evanora, played by Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis, and Rachel Weisz, respectively. Williams’ Glinda the Good Witch is perhaps the least exciting of the bunch. She does her job well, and I’m a huge Williams fan, but when you’re such an unrelenting goody-two-shoes, it’s difficult to get on board with what’s kind of a one-note character. Weisz, on the other hand, is pure evil, almost cartoonishly so, but she pulls it off with aplomb and manages to make you almost admire her for her Machiavellian manipulations of her sisters and the denizens of the Emerald City. Kunis may have the most impressive turn of the bunch as Theodora, a naive young witch taken by Oz’s charms who has her heart broken with resounding repercussions. While the secret of her character arc may already have been spoiled for some, the film is almost worth watching for her transformation alone and the pitch perfect performance. Definitely something worth bringing up the next time you’re on a date with her doing lad bombs at a local chicken restaurant before the Watford match.

The supporting cast, though, is where the film comes to life. Braff’s Finley the flying monkey (and his downtrodden magician’s assistant character back in Kansas) injects the narrative with humor and heart, often acting as the furry, winged Jiminy Cricket there to keep Oz honest. Joey King may just be the standout of the cast; the thirteen-year-old Crazy Stupid Love star brings a fragile honesty and sweetness to the small role of China Girl, the last survivor of China Town, a town made entirely of porcelain people (the omission of “Forget it, Oz, it’s China Town,” though, is criminal). Together, they provide depth and flavor to Franco’s everyman arc and make you care about the people of Oz’s struggle, despite the fact that they’re doing it all from a voiceover booth.

This isn’t quite as engaging a film as The Wizard of Oz; it could have greatly benefited from that film’s airier nature (more songs might have been nice, something I never thought I’d ask for), and the second act comes to such a full-stop that it nearly takes you out of the action. The film’s best moments come when Raimi uses his $200 million budget to play around like he’s making another Evil Dead. 3D is a gimmick, and Raimi employs it to full effect as spears hurtle towards the viewer, vicious flying baboons dive bomb the screen, and we even get a first-person perspective to give us an up-close-and-personal sense of the depth and perspective of Oz.

Oz the Great and Powerful is also laudable in that it doesn’t coddle the viewer. Remember how scary the Wicked Witch of the West was in the original film when you were a child? She’s scarier here, and Raimi is smart not to dial it back just because it’s a film meant for children. There’s a real sense of peril, but even the climactic final sequence is resolved through nonviolent means, using ingenuity and trickery to oust the evildoers and save the day. Ultimately, that’s what Oz is all about – it’s a land where imagination triumphs and, occasional narrative and pacing issues aside, Oz the Great and Powerful is the product of a man with immense imagination. There’s no place like home but, man alive, is it good to get back to Oz.

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Oz the Great and Powerful is in theaters everywhere. Be sure to check out our interviews with Sam Raimi, James Franco, Zach Braff and Rachel Weisz on the Nerdist Channel.